Designing the cover for Visible Glory
The Redmond Collection includes several drafts of the cover for Visible Glory. These manuscripts document the creative design process.
An early handwritten draft of the book's cover. The author is unknown.
The title Visible Glory is an allusion to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Unlike the African American protagonist in Ellison's novel, the men participating in the Million Man March were not invisible to society.
The subtitle in this version is "The Brotherhood of the Million Man March." It was eventually shortened to "The Million Man March."
It is unclear if the central image represents something or simply serves as a placeholder for a graphic to be determined later. Redmond, Fowler, and Atkins are identified as "Authors, Compilers, Photographers."
This later cover draft includes two of the three images used in the production version. It retains the "Brotherhood" reference in the subtitle. The credits for the three collaborators are refined to writing and assembly.
This version of the cover identifies the publisher as the "MMM Local Committee, Inc., of East St. Louis, Illinois." This implies that Eugene Redmond and his collaborators didn't originally envision the book as a special issue of the journal Drumvoices Revue.
Drumvoices Revue was published jointly by the English Department of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) and the Eugene B. Redmond Writers Club of East St. Louis. Redmond was an English professor at SIUE; all three collaborators were active in the Writers Club.
This mock-up of the cover corresponds closely to the publication version.
"Brotherhood" has been dropped from the subtitle. The cover images and their locations have been determined, and the credit language has been revised. Also, the book is clearly labeled as volume 7 of Drumvoices Revue in this draft.
The final cover as it was published.
Citation information for Visible Glory, with a link to the digitized version:
Redmond, Eugene B., Sherman L. Fowler, and Marcus Atkins. Drumvoices Revue. 7 (1997-1998): Visible Glory: The Million Man March. Online access is unrestricted.